What with the kid being overseas, I'd been kinda wanting to set up Skype. Easy, right? Needs a microphone and maybe a webcam? Even on Linux, that shouldn't be too problematic....
Er.
Well, I had an old Creative Labs USB webcam that, when last used (2004-ish), was strictly Windows-only. Plug that in just on the off-chance, see dmesg report finding a video device, run a test program, it seems to work... modulo a pathetic frame rate, or just horribly laggy performance. Still: it's for use at my desk. Frame rate doesn't mater much.
Okay, so microphone. Have a nice desktop mic from a few years ago. Find it. Plug it into the microphone port. Get plugging/unplugging noise, but nothing else. Discover that the cable is internally shorted (insulation broke down in the spot where it passes through the housing). Fix it. Try again. Now it kinds-sorta works, with an atrociously high noise-to-signal ratio. Spiders nesting in the actual microphone? Try other things.
Dig out old microphone from the cassette-recorder era. Similarly useless results.
Find a mic that does actually work, in terms of getting an audio signal into the computer, but it's a notably awkward configuration.
Swing by Fry's and Radio Shack. No sign of analog desktop microphones. There are some USB microphones, but they're pricey, and the sound-system configuration on this thing is crazy enough just with the motherboard's sound thingy (which I use) and the video card's HDMI audio channel (which I don't). Would I trust a USB microphone to work usefully here?
Ponder some more. In desperation, look in the webcam department at Fry's. Hmmm, there are some $15 and $20 USB webcams with built-in mics, including at least one (rather low-spec) model that claims not to need a driver disk on account of being standards-compliant or something. (What a concept!)
Anyway, the Magic Elf Box not offering much information on Linux compatibility of the models on offer, decide to try a $20 "720P HD Webcam with Stereo Microphone", Gear Head model WC7500HD. Hey, if it doesn't work for me, maybe I can pass it along to my parents.
Take it home, plug it in. The dmesg report shows a video device. And audio. Hmmmm....
Video works straightaway.
Getting the mic working involves mucking about with the sound system settings; none of the mixer utilities I try has the appropriate control, but the KDE System Settings utility lets me set the audio profile for the webcam mic as the recording device, and away we go!
So, there you have it. Gear Head WC7500HD does indeed work with Linux (kernel 3.2.0, Debian-testing (Wheezy)). Recognized as ATEN GCS932UBV1.0.09. This particular Linux install has its sound subsystem in a state of flux, so dealing with audio devices gets Interesting no matter what, but that's a distro (and local configuration) issue.
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